E3 2006: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

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The next Alliance race unveiled, and patch 1.11 tidbits.

By Tom McNamara

For those of you who've been vacationing on the far side of the moon for the past year or so, Blizzard has had a World of Warcraft expansion pack in the works for some time now. We unveiled the Blood Elf race on the Horde side back in October, but Blizzard has been mum on the Alliance's addition, up until now. Rumors persisted regarding pandas, murlocs, and demons, but they managed to keep a tight lid on the Draenei. Now, before you go jump off a cliff, these are not the Lost One variety you see shuffling around the Blasted Lands; they are in fact completely different in appearance and demeanor. In fact, so noble are the Draenei (rhymes with "man eye," or at least Jeffrey Kaplan, the lead designer, AKA Tigole, pronounces it that way) that they can be Paladins; in their quest to find a good home, they encountered Naaru, who blessed the Draenei with holy power.

These Draenei, according to the lore, were driven from their home of Argus to Draenor and lived uncomfortably among the orcs their before that planet was blown to bits and became the Outland, featured in the expansion. From the Outland, they fled to Azeroth and their ship crash landed on a small island called Azuremist. Details of how they came to Azeroth are revealed during their level 1-10 quest phase, and their allegiance to the Alliance is revealed from levels 1-20. Other items of note: They have their own capital city, named, Exedar, as do the Blood Elves. Although the male Dreanei resemble Taurens in size and physiology, the females are far more humanoid and feminine.

Speaking of Blood Elves, Kaplan was our guide through Silvermoon, their capital city in the section of Azeroth northeast of the Plaguelands. It's split in half by Arthas' path of destruction en route to the Sunwell (covered in Warcraft III). The eastern section is populated while the western section is for questing. From there, we headed south (with Kaplan darting about with administrator commands -- if you happened to be playing the game at the booth downstairs, around 5:00 PM, and noticed that night suddenly to day, well, he has the powah!). Here he mentioned Deathholme, a Scourge stronghold, and Tranquillian, a Blood Elf town. Then we ported to Zul'Aman, a forest troll raid dungeon for level 70 characters (the expansion pack increases the cap by 10). Since the Blood Elves are cut off from the rest of civilization, the Undercity (headed by a former Blood Elf) created a two-way permanent portal to Silvermoon, allowing quick access to the rest of the world.

But the Outland was what he was perhaps the most excited about, the land beyond the Dark Portal where players level 54 and above can try their hand at the new lands, beasts, loot, and flying mounts. Kaplan tells us that the Outlands are bigger than the Eastern Plaguelands -- as will be all new zones in the expansion pack (minus the miniature starting areas for level 1-5 players). The flying mount will be at least as fast as the current airborne transportation, with the only thing holding it back from higher speeds being client/server performance. He wouldn't put a price tag on this epic beast, but he said that its cost would be defrayed to a certain extent by the value of level 60-70 items, and he said there would be a little questing involved anyway.